You're always making with the jokes about racism. But there was something I saw the other day that wasn't really very funny at all. It was a documentary on coal miners in your area who had black lung disease. And they were having all kinds of difficulties with getting medical treatment.

And as I said a couple of days ago, white supremacy hate crimes are not a joking matter. And I bet this time you'll agree with me that black lung disease is not funny either.

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In Woodrow Wilson's day of course there was no television. But he made up for it by screening " The Birth of a Nation " numerous times. Reportedly especially after he had a stroke it was the one thing that he was doing.

And now just a hundred years later we've got a president who's doing the same thing. Just watches racist programming all day long.

It seems like I can recall that Woodrow Wilson said "The Birth of a Nation " was " history written with lightning ".

Well Princess, you can bet the present one inhabiting the White House could never in a million years come up with such an articulate metaphorical phrase as that, anyway!

(...nope, doubt you'll ever see any of his little tweets that could come even close to that...and if he did, you can STILL bet there'd be a few misspelled words in it)

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You're always making with the jokes about racism. But there was something I saw the other day that wasn't really very funny at all. It was a documentary on coal miners in your area who had black lung disease. And they were having all kinds of difficulties with getting medical treatment.

And as I said a couple of days ago, white supremacy hate crimes are not a joking matter. And I bet this time you'll agree with me that black lung disease is not funny either.

I was replying to Dargo's remark about chimney sweepers - dirt / soot / grime and for me coal dust

I'm certain chimney sweepers had their own illnesses but geeze LIGHTEN UP!

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The MARY POPPINS article is ridiculous, at least as far as the picture is concerned. As was said above, it's just soot. I've never inferred any racial implications.

As for William Frawley, he was a blackface minstrel in vaudeville and, in fact, introduced many hit songs including "Carolina in the Morning" and "My Mammy". Many blackface minstrels and comedians became character players in films. Lee "Lasses" White had his own minstrel company. Movie fans remember him as the mule-riding singing mail carrier in SERGEANT YORK.

Does the new Mary Poppins film feature blackface? No, but the NYT has nonetheless argued that the movie somehow borrows from racist 1930s minstrel jokes, the latest outrage-laden interpretation of a children’s classic.

‘Mary Poppins Returns’ is an“enjoyably derivative film,”but the story of the vivacious flying governess has a dark, racist side, the New York Timesopined. The Gray Lady – known throughout the world for reporting“all the news that’s fit to print”— explained itself thusly: In the 1964 film, Poppins accompanies her young charges, Michael and Jane Banks, up their chimney, resulting in her face getting covered in soot. Instead of cleaning her face, however, the magical nanny powders her nose and cheeks to make them even blacker, then launches into a song and dance routine with Dick Van Dyke.

To be fair, there are racist undertones to the 1964 film (“We’re being attacked by Hottentots!”shouts one of the characters when he sees the soot-covered Poppins and her entourage, using an archaic slur for black South Africans), but does this scene appear in the latest rendition?

No. Instead, the Times is outraged that a verse from one of the film’s many songs mentions a wealthy widow named Hyacinth Macaw – a clear reference to a talking parrot featured in the 1981 version of the Mary Poppins story, which in turn secretly represented a“negro lady”from the original 1934 version! Scandal of the century indeed.

With print revenues tanking across the board, The New York Times and its ilk seemingly regard outrage as currency, and taking a modern lens to hokey children’s classics is a guaranteed source of profit.

Last year, the Association for Library Service to Childrendumpedan award named after author Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose timeless ‘Little House on the Prairie’ series was apparently peppered with“anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments."Likewise, Mark Twain’s ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and Harriet Beecher’s ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ have both come under the hammer for their (period-typical) descriptions of black people.

In fairness, these books could actually be read as racially insensitive, unlike 2019’s Mary Poppins. But the media has picked even more ridiculous battlefields to fight the culture war on. Whether it was the Weather Channel reporter calling a snowman a“snowperson,”or a Slate columnistdemandingSanta Claus be stripped of his white, masculine identity and replaced with a gender-neutral penguin, journalists have always been at the forefront of the social justice movement.

On Twitter, commentators ridiculed the New York Times’ latest effort.“I didn't know the NY Times did parody articles now. Cool,”said one.“I suppose it's too much to hope this is satire,”another said.“The world has gone mad.”

But the line between satire and reality is even more blurred than you’d think. Turns out, the New York Times’ article made almost the exact same point as a tweet by transparently satirical social-justice account Titania McGrath last year. In the original tweet, ‘McGrath’ used the same photo as the New York Times to mockingly call out Hollywood’s lack of racial diversity.

Parroting satire accounts is a new one for the New York Times, but its writers better watch out. According to its own interpretation of Mary Poppins, parrots are racist.

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On a serious note here, and as much as I've attempted to keep this conversation on a lighter footing, I'm now driven to say that the thing I most regret about hearing stories such as this is that it much too easily gives ammunition to the actually often closed-minded and in some cases covertly and even overtly bigoted regressive and repressive elements within our country of which they can then fire off their counterattacks to what they've come to regard and call as the "Snowflakes" out there.

In other words, another example of the old saying, "shooting yourself in the foot"!

(..."Snowflakes", take note of what I'm saying here...DO NOT continue to shoot yourselves in your ***damn feet, and while there are MUCH bigger issues and TRUE bigotry to battle out there!!!)

Does the new Mary Poppins film feature blackface? No, but the NYT has nonetheless argued that the movie somehow borrows from racist 1930s minstrel jokes, the latest outrage-laden interpretation of a children’s classic.

‘Mary Poppins Returns’ is an“enjoyably derivative film,”but the story of the vivacious flying governess has a dark, racist side, the New York Timesopined. The Gray Lady – known throughout the world for reporting“all the news that’s fit to print”— explained itself thusly: In the 1964 film, Poppins accompanies her young charges, Michael and Jane Banks, up their chimney, resulting in her face getting covered in soot. Instead of cleaning her face, however, the magical nanny powders her nose and cheeks to make them even blacker, then launches into a song and dance routine with Dick Van Dyke.

To be fair, there are racist undertones to the 1964 film (“We’re being attacked by Hottentots!”shouts one of the characters when he sees the soot-covered Poppins and her entourage, using an archaic slur for black South Africans), but does this scene appear in the latest rendition?

No. Instead, the Times is outraged that a verse from one of the film’s many songs mentions a wealthy widow named Hyacinth Macaw – a clear reference to a talking parrot featured in the 1981 version of the Mary Poppins story, which in turn secretly represented a“negro lady”from the original 1934 version! Scandal of the century indeed.

With print revenues tanking across the board, The New York Times and its ilk seemingly regard outrage as currency, and taking a modern lens to hokey children’s classics is a guaranteed source of profit.

Last year, the Association for Library Service to Childrendumpedan award named after author Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose timeless ‘Little House on the Prairie’ series was apparently peppered with“anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments."Likewise, Mark Twain’s ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and Harriet Beecher’s ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ have both come under the hammer for their (period-typical) descriptions of black people.

In fairness, these books could actually be read as racially insensitive, unlike 2019’s Mary Poppins. But the media has picked even more ridiculous battlefields to fight the culture war on. Whether it was the Weather Channel reporter calling a snowman a“snowperson,”or a Slate columnistdemandingSanta Claus be stripped of his white, masculine identity and replaced with a gender-neutral penguin, journalists have always been at the forefront of the social justice movement.

On Twitter, commentators ridiculed the New York Times’ latest effort.“I didn't know the NY Times did parody articles now. Cool,”said one.“I suppose it's too much to hope this is satire,”another said.“The world has gone mad.”

But the line between satire and reality is even more blurred than you’d think. Turns out, the New York Times’ article made almost the exact same point as a tweet by transparently satirical social-justice account Titania McGrath last year. In the original tweet, ‘McGrath’ used the same photo as the New York Times to mockingly call out Hollywood’s lack of racial diversity.

Parroting satire accounts is a new one for the New York Times, but its writers better watch out. According to its own interpretation of Mary Poppins, parrots are racist.

If that article doesn't point out the over the top obsession with racism, nothing will. A soot cover nanny powdering her nose...GIVE ME A BREAK!

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The joke here ham is that two of our fellow posters who have taken their site names from, first, actor Michael Rennie (he with some the best cheekbones to ever grace the silver screen) once co-starred with, and secondly, actress Jeanne Crain (she with that beautiful girl-next-door smile) in the movie...